The German locative-directional alternation

Abstract

I investigate the locative-directional alternation in German, expressed by the change of case on the complement of a preposition, and its consequences for the theory of case in general. I argue that oblique cases and structural cases are assigned in a uniform manner, but they are distinct in the amount of functional structure: oblique case contains structural case. Following Starke (2005), I claim that oblique cases can be promoted to structural cases by stranding layers of oblique case. © 2010 The Author(s).